Very interesting questions!

I guess you are asking the right questions

I suggest yo to read the following:

http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/scientist.html

jojo, perhaps (and just perhaps ) your comments are not so obvious as you like to believe. giving a chance to this event would imply to have an open mind....
whatever....
anyone considering phd would do well asking questions, questions and more questions. that would be a good starting to find out.
never forget that even the ones that are absolutely sure have doubts later on.... and some even drop....

I see nothing wrong with being a working class producer of knowledge itself.
Most of people are, whether working in industry, government (whatever) people are mostly working class.
difference is how much you love what you do and how much money you make.
there might be problems when, given your status, you are forced to research what you do not want to or to accept decisions well outside your power that seriously affect/impair your research career, or see some others getting more funding because of politics and not earning what you deserve. but it happens to everyone, be it researchers, factory workers, peasants, industry executives and so on....

jojo, I do not understand your comment about 'not recommending phd to find out what you want', and such a comment, seems to me, is totally unrelated to the point.
If I got you right, you claim that when you know it, you know it for sure: "the truth is that if you are meant for a PhD, you know it. You don't need someone else to tell you that or to clarify that. You will know that a PhD is what you wanna do with your life"
This claim is what I find to be not necessarily true. Most of people do not know what they want and need a process to find out, including some counseling, advice, reading, introspection, talks and so on that helps them to clarify and understand what they are meant to. Some people do not need all that.
the idea of enrolling in a phd program to find out has nothing to do with all this

jojo, I know what you mean, but I disagree with you. The fact is that most people (specially young people) need help to know what they want. From what you said it seems as if everybody knows what they want all the time. "the truth is that if you are meant for a PhD, you know it" that is not necessarily true. Many people need help to realize what they want to do with their life and there are plenty of professional people/research that help others take such big decisions (no succes warranty, of course, lol!). It is true that one must answer the final question, but it is also true that knowing what we want is one of the hardest things in life for many.

Continued..

Ancient times were not necessarily better.

Making it available for any man/woman is more a myth than a reality. It is like "everybody can have a chance of amassing the fortune of Bill Gates"

This is specially true:

"Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it." -- Albert Einstein

In a capitalist economy you are a producer of knowledge, that is one weird definition for scientists/researchers/phd'ers, and as a producer of something you are, economicaly speaking, a worker, belong to the working class.

I guess that is the kind of people phd produces.

Im absolutely sure you all know him but tried to make a point that nobody cares whether he has or not few letters before his name.

Actually, not so many of them were rich and wealthy (old greeks owned slaves), many were not and suffered greatly.

Most of them were interested in so diverse branches of knowledge instead of getting stuck in a single narrow topic as many modern PhD'ers.

I wanted to emphasize their genuine interest in knowledge more than any other second (or third) interest in pursuing their findings.

Continued

As far as I know, modern PhD institution, the way we know it, comes from Germany, from a German long-rooted tradition, but Im not sure and I might be getting a PhD in ignorance.....Does anybody has heard about Dr Goethe? He is Goethe, period! (and he is forever....)

Continued
Is the "modern PhD institution" working as a cult where you sweat blood to get one just to become so proud about that, that you end up thinking you are so special because few (very few) people go for it and finish? But not for the knowledge or self-building and growing as a better person (inside)? Remember Tycho Brae, Galois, Gauss, were much more than plain technicians/scientists/researchers. Most of them were interesting people with interesting lifes and, by the way, they really were multidisciplinary people who got engaged in genuine love for knowledge and humanity and not for the few letters before their name nor the challenge it represents such a piece of paper??

Im not the right person to answer this, but it is the right question to reflect on.
Lets think back about the great minds of all times. Did Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Ptagoras, and later Da Vinci, Galileo, Newton, Leibnitz, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Pascal, Cervantes, Goethe, got a PhD and became insane? (sorry missing many, many, many more men/women, but Im not that cultured and space is limited)
How did the "modern PhD institution" come into power to create people who are not necessarily essentially different/better from the man/woman-on-the-street??

"Students and scholars of all kinds and of every age aim, as a rule, only at information, not insight. They make it a point of honour to have information about everything, every stone, plant, battle, or experiment and about all books, collectively and individually. It never occurs to them that information is merely a means to insight, but in itself is of little or no value...With the impressive erudition of those great pundits, I sometimes say to myself: "Ah, how little they must have had to think about, to have been able to read so much!"

"

-- Arthur Schopenhauer, "On Learning & The Learned"

"Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it." -- Albert Einstein

Sounds familiar?

Also, try

http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/scientist.html

Sounds familiar?

"For this is the truth: I have moved from the house of the scholars and I even banged the door behind me. My soul sat hungry at their table too long; I am not, like them, trained to pursue knowledge as if it were nutcracking. I love freedom and the air over the fresh earth; rather would I sleep on ox hides than on their decorums and respectabilities."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Instead of focusing on guns control, why not ask the real question?
Why on earth someone wants to get a gun (about US $540) and shoot as many persons as possible? Is it that by making it easy to get a gun it makes you feel tempted to use it for if you have it and not use it then why you have it in the first place? If you own a Ferrari would you be anxious to run it 250MPH as soon as possible?
But why on earth someone wants to get a gun and shoot people? And why on earth someone wants to run at 250MPH? Is it part of modern culture? Or is it a way to get rid of our many frustrations? Or both?

Otto, I got your point.
I will add that it is always worth and healthy to ask yourself whether or not you are wasting your precious life, as it is short and fragile. How could anybody correct his/her path if not by asking questions and doing deep reflections and analysis? Isn' it the way of any researcher, to wonder, to be impressed by events and to try to draw conclusions?
We must always have critical thinking and never stop asking questions even if such questions made us uncomfortable.! And to dare to think the unthinkable....